Fugitive Pieces returns in idle hours: its opening images, its weather, its quiet insistence on loss.
Among the book’s final scenes, the second narrator, Ben, searches through Jakob’s house on a Greek island. He wanders the rooms, opening drawers, touching objects, looking for the lost notebooks. Then he finds the library:
Books on the aurora borealis, on meteorites, on fogbows. On topiary. On semaphore signals. On Ghana high life, pygmy music, the sea shanties of Genoan longshoremen. On rivers, the philosophy of rain, on Avebury, the white horse of Uffington. On cave art, botanical art, on the plague. War memoirs from several countries. The most vigorous collection of poetry I’ve ever seen, in Greek, Hebrew, English, Spanish.
A life could be traced from the arrangement of those shelves. A sensibility, at least. The books we gather around us, even in fiction, make visible the maps we live by.
>Just checked your comments to see about any recommendations on the philosophy of rain. Shame.
>Nicole – I would love to know the inspiration for Anne Michaels to include that in the contents of Jakob's/Athos's library.
>Heaven's Breath by Lyall Watson – about winds, but wonderful even if winds aren't really your thing.
>ghostofelberry – That's just what I was looking for. Thank you. I've never come across Lyall Watson but what a fascinating body of work.
>Michael Ondaatje got all his stuff about the ghibli etc. for The English Patient from Watson's book. Everything i've read by Watson is superb.